Chris Begley, a devoted United Parcel Service (UPS) veteran collapsed during his delivery route on August 23 and passed away on the 27th. Begley, 57, had been looking forward to retirement after devoting 28 years to the company. He was a father of two and a loving husband.
It was a blistering August day when temperatures soared to 101 degrees farenheit, with the heat index reaching a brutal 108 degrees. A government issued heat advisory was in place but UPS still expected its workers to deliver under such perilous conditions.
And what did UPS do? Their response was nothing short of criminal negligence. A UPS supervisor, instead of immediately calling an ambulance, left the company truck at the scene and drove Begley home in his personal vehicle. Four days later, he died in a hospital. Why was Chris not taken to a hospital immediately? Why did UPS continue to gamble with his life even after he was already critically ill?
This isn’t the first time that a UPS driver has perished due to the heat. In 2021, Jose Rodriguez, 23, died of a heat stroke on the job. Not long after, Esteban “Stevie” Chavez, 24, also died of heat stroke. Since 2015, there have been at least 143 heat-related injuries at UPS. Delivery workers have long been demanding for UPS to install AC units in their vehicles, but the bosses do not care. To them this is just an expense which erodes profit margins, reducing human life to a cold math calculation: the possible financial repercussions of the occasional worker dying is cheaper than installing AC.
The company’s response was nothing short of insulting. A UPS spokesperson offered empty condolences while shirking responsibility for Chris’s death.
“We are saddened by the loss of our driver, Christopher Begley,” they said, as if they had no part in this tragedy. “We are cooperating with the authorities as they continue investigating the cause of death.” Investigating? How about acknowledging the obvious? UPS’s callous attitude towards health and safety caused this outcome.
The Teamsters, the very union that should be fighting tooth and nail for workers like Chris Begley, has shown a disturbing lack of militancy and an infuriating level of submissiveness, however as a regime union this is sadly unsurprising. Local Teamsters 767, led by President and Principal Officer Dave Reeves, represents over 340,000 rank-and-file UPS workers nationwide. Yet, their response has been feeble at best. This incident should have compelled the union to strike and force UPS back to the negotiating table as the newly adopted contract, adopted the day before his death, will only bring in AC for new vehicles, and the company has an entire year to do so.
Chris Begley’s death must not be in vain; it must be a rallying cry for all workers to unite and demand safer working conditions, such as AC for all existing vehicles as soon as possible, a more relaxed delivery pace, and days off for vehicles without AC when there is a heat advisory. As the disappointment of this “historic” contract has revealed itself, it’s clear that only militant class unionism can effectively defend worker interests, rather than this tepid legal bargaining by bureaucrats and lawyers.
